This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2003-50499, filed on Jul. 23, 2003, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a temperature detection circuit and method, and more particularly, to a temperature detection circuit and method, which sample the delay time change of a delay circuit according to temperature change, change the sampled result to an address, and detect a temperature using the address.
2. Description of the Related Art
Along with the high-integration, miniaturization, and low power of semiconductor devices, various methods have been developed to reduce an amount of current consumed by the semiconductor device.
A semiconductor device including DRAMs controls its self-refresh period differently according to temperature change in order to reduce current consumption. Accordingly, a temperature detector detects a temperature of such a semiconductor device and controls the self-refresh period of the semiconductor device according to the detected temperature.
Since a conventional temperature detector detects the temperature of the semiconductor device utilizing current change according to temperature change, the detected temperature has large deviation from an actual temperature. That is, the conventional temperature detector cannot detect a small change of temperature.